2018-2019 Workshops
Spring 2019 Past Events
For many “assessment” is a dirty word. But, what if we thought about assessment as a way to better understand our students and our teaching, rather than a black hole into which we pour forms for the sake of accreditation? Yes, it is possible!!! In fact, transparent assessment practices have incredible potential to promote learning and encourage persistence, especially among student populations that have been historically marginalized by traditional teaching practices. (Plus, awesome assessment data looks REALLY good in a job app, promotion, or tenure portfolio!).
Monday, May 6th @ 1:15 Pitzer, Broad Center (NOT Broad HALL) 208
Tuesday, May 7th @ CMC,9:30 Honnold Mudd Library, Digital Toolshed
This pathway looked at what a supportive classroom looks like, how it benefits students, differences between faculty availability and accessibility, and specific ways to create an inclusive space for your students. This workshop described ways to assess if your efforts are working. Participants in this workshop:
- Reviewed activities to enhance inclusivity
- Discussed methods to assess these activities
- Developed an assessment plan for their course
Tuesday, April 30th @4:15, Honnold Mudd Library Keck Classroom
Wednesday, May 1st @ 1:15, Millikan 1249
Educating the Whole Student
Jessica Tinklenberg from the CTL wrapped up our “What Your Students Want You To Know” series in May with a review of the year’s events, a time of integration and reflection, and a celebration of our students!
Wednesday, May 1st, 12-1pm. Honnold Mudd Library, Honnold Conference Room
Advising graduate students can involve many aspects, including academic planning as well as advising research experiences. Faculty supervision of such opportunities can make the difference in terms of the academic outcomes students acquire from their research projects and experiences. What are some key strategies that can help faculty learn better how to “teach” students in research and advising settings? Participants in this workshop:
- Thought about advising as a teaching and learning process for students;
- Learned some background in what research says about how student research experiences affect student learning outcomes.
- Analyzed links between classroom teaching and research experience supervision.
- Discussed strategies for research supervision including focusing on student and faculty goals, learning outcomes, and scaffolding knowledge.
Tuesday, April 16th, @ 4:15, KGI Training Room 210 (in the village above Blaze Pizza)
Wednesday, April 17th @ 11:00, CGU Burkle 26
Like many other approaches to teaching, Active Learning (AL) does have the potential to create either inclusive or exclusive classroom environments depending on how it’s used. The difference between one result and the other is often the intentional reflection of the instructor on their practices and the experiences of their students. In this workshop, we:
- Reviewed active learning concepts and techniques that we encountered throughout the year;
- Discussed principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and the implications of these principles for AL;
- Troubleshot AL practices that have the potential to exclude and reframed them to be intentionally inclusive.
Wednesday, April 3rd, @ 10, Scripps College, Humanities 201
Thursday, April 4th, @ 2:45, Honnold Mudd Library, Keck Classroom
The Black Student Experience
Our colleagues Nick Daily and Lydia Middleton from the Office of Black Student Affairs will discussed how students they’ve surveyed experience life at the 7Cs.
Wednesday, April 3rd, 12-1pm Honnold Mudd Library, Honnold Conference Room
Why do we even have discussions in our classes? Is there a unique benefit for student learning, or are we simply doing to others what has been done to us? This workshop focused on ways to make our discussion-based classes more productive, transparent, and valuable for deep student learning. Participants in this workshop applied principles of transparency to classes in which discussion plays some role; learned new techniques and principles that can support meaningful discussion; and evaluated the usefulness of these techniques for our various classroom settings and goals.
This workshop was Step 4 in the Transparent Teaching Toolkit Pathway (more here)
This workshop was Step 3 in the Inclusive Classroom Community Pathway (more here)
LBGTQ+ Identities and Holistic Wellbeing
Manual Diaz, Director of the Queer Resource Center gave a brief presentation and discussion about what LGBTQ+ students want their professors to know about the current challenges students face in and out of the classroom.
While “Active Learning” (AL) is often associated with certain classroom activities (like Think-Pair-Share or Jigsaw) it is actually a way of thinking about every aspect of the learning environment and experience, including what learning is, how it happens, and whose voices and ideas matter to the process. This workshop was an opportunity to take these broader pedagogical concerns of AL and apply them to our unique disciplinary classroom contexts. It was also an opportunity to think about interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches to AL that might offer additional benefits to our student learners.
Undergraduate research opportunities can be important learning experiences for students. Faculty supervision of such opportunities can make the difference in terms of the academic outcomes students acquire from undergraduate research. What are some key strategies that can help faculty learn better how to “teach” students in research settings? Participants in this workshop learned some background in what research says about how undergraduate research affects student learning outcomes, worked to understand links between classroom teaching and undergraduate research experience supervision, and discussedstrategies for undergraduate research supervision including focusing on student and faculty goals, learning outcomes, and scaffolding knowledge.
Mental Health and Assisting Students
Dr. Anneka Busse, Crisis Therapist and Care Manager at Monsour Counseling, shared with us a current update on Mental Health and provided a guide to assisting student struggling with mental health. A light lunch will be served.
Sarah Rose Cavanagh
Sarah Rose Cavanagh, author of the Fall 2018 Guilt Free Book Club Book The Spark of Learning, gave the CTL’s 2019 Distinguished Lecture.
Sarah Rose Cavanagh is a psychologist, professor, and Associate Director of the D’Amour Center for Teaching Excellence at Assumption College. Her research considers whether the strategies people choose to regulate their emotions and the degree to which they successfully accomplish this regulation can predict trajectories of psychological functioning over time. Her most recent research project, funded by the Davis Educational Foundation, focuses on whether giving students tools from emotion regulation at the start of class can improve their same-day and semester-long learning. Sarah’s first book, The Spark of Learning: Energizing the College Classroom with the Science of Emotion, was published in 2016. Her second book, HIVEMIND: The Power and Perils of Our Collective Social Selves, will be published by Grand Central Publishing in 2019. She gives keynote addresses and workshops at a variety of colleges and regional conferences, blogs for Psychology Today, and writes essays for The Chronicle of Higher Education. She’s also on Twitter too much, at @SaRoseCav.
Additionally Sarah hosted a discussion with First 5 Faculty at 10am (POM Millikin 1249), and be was available for informal lunch discussion at 12pm (Honnold Mudd Library Honnold Conference Room).
Spring Teaching Tune Up
The CTL helped everyone gear up for the Spring Semester with a free one day micro-conference. The CTL and other 7C partners hosted sessions on syllabus design, managing your scholarship, universal design, advising, digital pedagogy, and classroom firsts.
For more information, including session descriptions, and the full schedule, go here.
Fall 2018 Past Events
Transparent teaching has been shown to have significant benefits for both faculty and students, including more equitable student learning outcomes, improved higher-order thinking and metacognitive skills, and even increased faculty job satisfaction (Perry, Hall, and Ruthig 2007; Winkelmes, M. 2013.). This workshop provides participants with an opportunity to discover the principles and benefits of a more transparent classroom, and to learn new ways to incorporate transparency into their assignments, lectures, course documents, and assessments.
This workshop was an “appetizer” into to the Transparent Teaching Toolkit Path (more here)
There has been a lot of talk in Higher Education recently about the potential of active learning strategies to improve student engagement, satisfaction, retention, and overall learning. But — is “active learning” just the latest educational fad, or something more? Participants in this workshop identified some basic principles of active learning pedagogy, discussed the facts and fictions about using active learning in higher education, assessed some of the benefits and limitations of an AL approach, and began the process of building a consortial database of active learning ideas.
Advising and mentoring are often thought to be important for students – both in terms of their satisfaction in pursuing degrees and in their persistence in college. What is the difference between advising, mentoring, and supervising and what are strategies that faculty may employ to be better advisers and mentors? Participants in this workshop learned how the advising/mentoring needs of students differ from their first year to the final year in their undergraduate or graduate degree programs; discussed the ways in which advising activities may be linked to faculty service, scholarship, and teaching, and how advising can be affected by department (and college structures) and the kinds of support faculty may need to be most effective, and begin the process of developing one’s own advising strategies and pedagogies.
This workshop was Step 1 in the Pedagogy Beyond the Classroom Pathway (more here).
Please RSVP for other workshops in the path here: https://goo.gl/forms/AR3UUr4PLj7w8ZMD2
This workshop discussed what a supportive classroom looks like, how it benefits students and some examples on how to create an inclusive space for your students. Participants in this workshop identified some basic principles of Inclusive Classrooms, discussed attribution theory and stereotype threat and how they affect student performance, discussed classroom interventions that can help alleviate these effects; and worked with peers to develop interventions they can implement in their current courses.
This workshop was Step 1 in the Creating an Inclusive Classroom Community Pathway (more here).
Religious Bias and Anti-Semitism
The Claremont Colleges Chaplains share what they know about our students’ experiences with religious bias and anti-semitism. A light lunch will be served
This workshop was the second in our WYSWYTK lunchtime presentation series.
According to a UNLV study on transparent teaching, ”students’ learning outcomes improved when they understood how and why instructors had structured their learning experiences in particular ways” (Winklemes 2013). Connecting the “how” to the “why” is particularly important when we design assignments, and doing so has been shown to not only improve learning outcomes but decrease resistance, increase motivation, and positively impact faculty and student satisfaction about student work. In this workshop, participants reviewed some of the key principles of transparent teaching, applied the UNLV / TILT “Purpose-Task-Criteria” approach to sample assignments and our own class work; and evaluated some of the benefits and limitations of transparent assignment design.
This workshop was Step 1 in the Transparent Teaching Toolkit Path (more here)
Active learning techniques are easy to implement in a variety of classrooms and with a diversity of teaching approaches, and have been shown to encourage deep, connected learning and improved content retention. In this workshop, participants learned at least ten different active learning techniques that could be implemented in many classroom settings; evaluated the class time and preparation necessary for various techniques, considered which might be the best fit for their classes and teaching style, and continued to build our database of active learning techniques together.
This workshop was Step 2 in the Active Learning Path (more here)
Developing Cultural Competencies
We heard from our colleagues from the Chicano Latino Student Association as they shared our student’s perspective on cultural competence in the classroom. A light lunch will be served.
This workshop was the third in our WYSWYTK presentation series.
Becoming a better advisor is what many faculty members (and staff) strive to do, but it can be difficult finding helpful strategies to improve our interactions with students. What are strategies that faculty may employ to be better advisers and how does one develop a pedagogy around advising?
Participants in this workshop looked at advising as a teaching and learning process for students, considered the main goals of advising in particular contexts; Discussed the relationships with classroom teaching pedagogy and advising pedagogy, and started the process of drafting one’s own advising strategies and pedagogies.
This workshop was Step 2 in the Pedagogy Beyond the Classroom Path (more here)
Faculty feedback on student work has the potential to encourage and challenge learners, but also to frustrate and create mistrust. In this workshop, participants considered concrete ways to make formal and informal feedback more inclusive, productive, and timely. Participants also began developing a strategy for giving feedback on a future assignment.
This workshop was Step 2 in the Transparent Teaching Toolkit Path (more here)
Affordable Course Materials
Jennifer Beamer, head of Scholarly Communications in the Library, Jessica Davila Greene, Director of Digital Technologies, and Charlotte Brun, Social Science Library, shared information on the importance of affordable course materials. This workshop was the fourth in our WYSWYTK presentation series.
Student learning and retention increase when they feel supported. While faculty might make themselves available, students perceive a difference between availability and accessibility. This workshop will discuss ways to make yourself more accessible by setting an inclusive tone in your classroom. Participants in this workshop participated in tone setting exercises to develop definitions of inclusive classrooms, discussed feminist pedagogies and how they changed previous notions of what defined good teaching, and worked with peers to develop goals for classroom communities and exercises to implement in current courses.
This workshop was the second in the Creating an Inclusive Classroom Community pathway (more here).
LBGTQ+ Identities and Holistic Wellbeing
Manual Diaz, Director of the Queer Resource Center gave a brief presentation and discussion about what LGBTQ+ students want their professors to know about the current challenges students face in and out of the classroom.
Looking for events from previous years? Here’s what we did in 2016-17 , 2017-18, and 2018-19.